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When I look back upon the choices I made in making Mansfield Park , I feel they were pretty ballsy. I just thought there has to be a reason why I was doing a period piece. I wanted to say, "Look, we are rich because of slavery. We stole people and made them into slaves. Nothing comes for free." I didn't want to do another English dance party.
--
As quoted in "Patricia Rozema : The Mermaid's Song" interview with Patricia Rozema, in The View from Here : Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (2007) by Matthew Hays, p. 289

 

Patricia Rozema

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Much was made by abolitionists that the King James version of the Bible didn't use the word slaves, but, instead, servants. This meant, in their minds, that God didn't really approve of slavery. But that argument was linguistic at best. Slavery was codified and even sanctified in the tenth commandment, throwing slaves (and wives) in with other property belonging to one's neighbor that one must not covet. The Bible even regulated--as opposed to banning outright--the killing of slaves, stating that if a slave were beaten to death, the slave owner should be punished (though not killed himself, as would be his fate were he to kill a freeman), but if the slave didn't die until a day or two after the beating, the slave owner "shall not be punished, for he [the slave] is his money."

 

Derrick Jensen

 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care-not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: (1) That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro in every possible event of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." (2) That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future. (3) That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State makes him free as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made not to be pressed immediately, but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one or one thousand slaves in Illinois or in any other free State.

 

Abraham Lincoln

 

We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

 

Martin Luther King

 

I'd been two years locked up in hospitals. I was twenty when I got out from Bloomingdale and I met a young man from Harvard who was very attractive in a sort of Ivy league way. And we made love in my grandmother's apartment and it was terrific, it was just fabulous. That was the first time I ever made love and I had no inhibitions or anything. It was just beautiful. I didn't get my period and so I had to tell my doctor. The hospital pass was given to see if you could handle yourself outside, so I was terrified to tell him that I thought I was pregnant, but I finally did. I was pregnant … I could get an abortion without any hassle at all, just on the grounds of a psychiatric case. So that wasn't too good a first experience with lovemaking. I mean, it kind of screwed up my head, for one thing. This fellow found out. I was upset … and he asked me, and I said "I'm pregnant. I'm not going to ask you for anything, so don't get uptight, but it's just kind of making me uncomfortable. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do about it." He split, and I didn't see him again until the summer had passed and I went to Cambridge for my first free year.

 

Edie Sedgwick

 

Do you know the story about the farmer who complained all his life about getting too much rain or too little, about the soil and the winds and so on? [...] The farmer died and went to Mainframe, and was soon called to the magnificent chamber in which Pas holds court. Pas said to him, "I understand you feel that I botched certain aspects of the job when I built the Whorl; and the farmer admitted it was so, saying, "Well, sir, pretty often I thought I could have made it better." To which Pas replied, "Yes, that's what I wanted you to do."

 

Gene Wolfe